Obama puts his feet up before decisive debate with Romney

So, we have had two presidential debates so far and by most reckonings the first was a Mitt Romney score, while the second, last week in New York, went to Barack Obama. If the race for the White House is seen in sporting terms (it comes but every four years, like the Olympics) we could say that tonight’s Battle in Boca is the elimination round.

Follow that logic — faulty of course — and we might assume that the main prize on November 6 will go to Mr Obama again. Tonight’s debate, on the grounds of tiny Lynn University, will be watched once more by millions and will theoretically focus exclusively on foreign policy. On that, Mr Obama done good.

Remember the promises he made four years ago? End the “dumb war” in Iraq, begin to wind down the Afghanistan conflict and dispatch Osama bin Laden. Done. And there is the incumbency advantage. Mr Obama is the Commander-in-Chief. On his only overseas foray as candidate, Mr Romney was an oops machine.

Yet the task for the President tonight is not looking so easy. The surge enjoyed by Mr Romney since debate one in Denver — polls now show them in a dead heat — has in part come from his picking at his Democrat rival on foreign policy and his stoking of voter uneasiness about China, a nuclear Iran, and the murder of the US ambassador in Libya. True, Mr Romney made a hash of that last issue the last time around, but it doesn’t mean he won’t try again here in Boca Raton.

Mr Obama will be asked to explain one more time how it was that some of his top people spent days blaming the Benghazi tragedy on a mob riled up by an anti-Islam video when it’s now clear that the intelligence services — or parts of it — knew it was an attack by militants from the outset.

In the broadest terms, the Republican argues that Mr Obama has run an “apologetic” foreign policy — that he hasn’t wielded the American cudgel like he was meant to. This takes us to Iran and reports yesterday that its regime may now be willing to hold direct talks with the US on its nuclear programme, though after the election.

This may or may not happen. But the point you will hear from Mr Romney is: why hasn’t this been dealt with already? More broadly, he will posit that the Arab Spring is becoming an Arab Nightmare and that Mr Obama is to blame.

Somehow, Mr Romney has managed to rewrite Mr Obama’s national security record from spot-on to cack-handed. Tonight the President must undo that. If he doesn’t, round three will got to his rival. And so might the White House.